The Sufi Path is a process of amanesis (remembrance, realization). In pre-eternity, God asked the spirits: Alastu bi Rabikum (Am I not your Lord)? When we come into this material existence, we forget about pre-eternity and the task of life is to remember our way back to the truth concerning the nature of our essential relationship with God. This process of remembering or recollecting is known as amanesis.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Fear and the Sufi Path - Part 2

All aspects of created existence are governed by laws, rules and principles. There are consequences for violating these laws, rules and principles on every level of existence -- from the physical, to the social, to the spiritual.

If we befoul ourselves by transgressing various aspects of the ordered character of the universe, then, our own wretched spiritual condition which becomes the consequence with which we must live for having transgressed in such ways. Indeed, we become our own self-created and self-imposed punishment.

God knows how the universe works. Divinity is the One Who has set it up with the nature that it has.

God knows how human beings work. Divinity is the One Who has given us our constructive spiritual possibilities, as well as our potential for destructiveness.

If, by God's grace, we are able to realize our spiritual potential - which alone is at the heart of why we have been given existence at all -- then, all praise for this is due to God. On the other hand, if, by the grace of our own nafs, we are not able to realize our spiritual potential, then we ourselves seal and determine our fate.

God will not have to lift a finger against us on the Day of Judgement. We will have done it all to ourselves.

We will have inflicted grievous spiritual harm upon ourselves, and God merely has to leave us to our own choices and devices. In effect, we will be told: 'Alright, if this is what you want, then, this is what you will get -- in spades'.

People who have spent time in sensory deprivation tanks, or similar situations, speak about a variety of stages that an individual goes through during this process. At some juncture, a stage may come in which the individual is thrown back on to themselves and they began to hallucinate, and their internal life of fantasy and imagination becomes the woof and warp of experience at that point.

We conveniently forget that everything which is positive and interesting in our interior lives is a grace from God. This includes fantasy, memory and imagination.

What would be the condition of our interior lives, if everything positive were removed, and we only had emptiness, darkness, worthlessness, loneliness, and boredom for our eternal companions? In the sensory deprivation tanks, people at least have fantasy or imagination to fall back on, but what if we were brought face to face with what we actually have to offer independently of God's grace -- namely, our own nothingness?

Furthermore, what if these "companions" were bathed in an intense, unrelenting awareness both of what the truth about ourselves is, as well as in a realization of what might have been but, now, is eternally lost? All of this, compliments of our nafs and our free-will offering of allowing ourselves to give in to the incessant whining and nagging of the unending desires of the nafs.

While in this condition of deprivation, we will not be able to go sleep as we can now when we get too tired of ourselves. Moreover, while in this state, we will not be able to distract ourselves, as we can now, with various diversionary tactics in which -- in addition to the participation of our own nafs -- the world, Iblis and the unbelievers also are quite active.

Instead, all we will be able to do is experience the full horror of our own being, devoid of all spirituality and all of the positive supports, capacities, and endowments which God has generously bestowed upon us in this life.

We will not be able to idle away the time using our intelligence and creative imagination to amuse ourselves. Intelligence and creative imagination are gifts of God, and these do not belong to us. They will be summarily stripped from us, like the signs and marks of honor are stripped from a disgraced officer who has been found guilty of traitorous activities in a court-martial.

All we will have is our awareness of the wretched, pitiful, foul, sickening, and agonizingly painful nature of our spiritually and ontologically empty condition -- the one we have spent a life time on Earth in creating. And, we will have the deep, abiding awareness that we have brought ourselves to this lowly condition.

Our fear of God is the realization we have, however dim this realization may be, that when we meet God, then, God will let us know, in no uncertain terms, what we have done to ourselves and just how we have ruined all the good things which God had planned for us. Divinity wanted to shower us with blessings, and we said: "Thanks, but no thanks."

And, God may say to us: "Then, no thanks it is, and in you go to the mother of all sensory/intellectual/spiritual deprivation tanks: Hell. I hope you will enjoy what you have wrought and bought with your life." But, of course, we won't -- not even a little.

God has said of Divinity: "My mercy doth take precedence over My wrath." Yet, God also has warned us of what the consequences are for those who treat the purpose of this Earthly life with contempt.

We should fear our meeting with God for the unwelcome situation in which we have placed Divinity. Now, the difficult decision must be made as to whether, or not, God should permit the human being's capacity as a free agent (as one who has been given the discretionary power to make decisions in life) to take precedence over God's mercy.

Should God honor our status as creatures who have been entrusted with a free will? Or, should Divinity save us from ourselves one last time?

Human beings are very quick in this life to take exception with the possibility that God might be interfering with our precious free choice. In effect, many human beings are saying, if the choice is really mine, then let me do what I want, and I don't want any interference.

If this is how we want it in life, then, why should God change the arrangement in the next life just because we no longer wish to accept responsibility for the consequences which go with the territory of free choice? If God does not change the arrangement, then Divinity permits our freedom to take precedence over Divine mercy -- but, remember, this has been our wish all along.

God loves us and doesn't want this for us. At the same time, Divinity respects our individuality and the way we exercise the free choice which is at the heart of that individuality.

If we go to the mother of all deprivation tanks, it is because we have chosen to do so and God is merely honoring our wish. We did not want Divinity to interfere on Earth, so now Divinity may stay out of the matter in the next life as well.

We are alive now. Sooner or later, we will not be.

When our time is up, so are our opportunities. If an individual will not do things for Allah's sake, then, the individual might think about doing them for her or his own sake.

Know that whatever transgression one commits, one commits them, first and foremost, against oneself. If one, for example, does not say prayers or does not fast, then it is the soul of the one who is abstaining from these things which suffers and no one else - certainly not God. It is such a person's soul which is condemning itself and bringing itself one step closer to possible spiritual ruination.

Doing things as Allah wishes is the best way because these methods serve as the spiritual protocalls or algorithms, so to speak, which God has made available to us for helping us to generate solutions concerning what it is that God wants us to realize about our true spiritual identity and essential spiritual capacity. These Divine protocalls or algorithms are known by Divinity to be effective in bringing about the spiritual transformation of the individual -- as opposed to our own philosophical and scientific inventions which have no capacity for a spiritually transforming efficacy whatsoever.

God has given us all a secret potential. This potential is a partial manifestation, reflection or expression of the hidden treasure alluded to in a well-known hadith qudsi (a non-revelatory saying which comes from the mouth of the Prophet but conveys the communication of Divinity).

This treasure is the intention behind, as well as the purpose of, existence. If one turns one's back on this, then one is working in opposition to the whole fabric and character of being.

God is longing for us with an unfathomable longing. This longing is not for the sake of Divinity since Divinity already has all that can be had. God's longing is for us to come and know and share in what Divinity already knows and is.

This Divine longing is God's wish for us. If we work in accordance with that wish, then, we will find, God willing, that Divinity is happy and overjoyed for our sake. If we work in opposition to that Divine wish, then we may find, God forbid, that Divinity is angry with us for our sake - at what we have denied ourselves.

As a Sufi once said, the real faqir (one who practices austerities and denies himself or herself) is not one who chooses God over the world. The real faqir is one who chooses the world over God.